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“TAKING AWAY THE OCCASION FOR VIOLENCE”: THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY AND LAW ENFORCEMENT IN THE JUSTICE AND POLICY STUDIES DEPARTMENT AT GUILFORD COLLEGE Jane K. Fernandes Guilford College Hollyce “Sherry” Giles Guilford College Barbara J. Lawrence Guilford College James E. Hinson Greensboro Police Department Wesley Morris The Beloved Community Center Journal Committed to Social Change on Race and Ethnicity Volume 2, Issue 2 | 2016 Copyright © 2016 Board of Regents of The University of Oklahoma on behalf of the Southwest Center for Human Relations Studies. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution and for all derivative works, including compilations and translations. Quoting small sections of text is allowed as long as there is appropriate attribution.
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“TAKING AWAY THE OCCASION FOR VIOLENCE”: THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY AND LAW ENFORCEMENT IN THE JUSTICE AND
POLICY STUDIES DEPARTMENT AT GUILFORD COLLEGE
Jane K. Fernandes Guilford College
Hollyce “Sherry” Giles
Guilford College
Barbara J. Lawrence Guilford College
James E. Hinson
Greensboro Police Department
Wesley Morris The Beloved Community Center
The mid-sized southern city of Greensboro, North Carolina has not been spared from the crisis in policing gripping the United States. The city has a history of racial conflict and violence involving the police, most notably the 1979 Massacre where five anti-Klan protestors were killed by Neo-Nazi and Klan members. It is also the site of renowned movements for social justice; in 1961, four North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University freshmen sparked the Sit-In movement, and in 2005, the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the United States, which addressed the Massacre, took place in Greensboro. Through partnerships with activists, police, and other community members, the Justice and Policy Studies Department (JPS) at Guilford College works to strengthen police-community relations in Greensboro. The Quaker peace testimony, which calls for “taking away the occasion for violence,” inspires and guides these efforts. This article explores the ways that JPS and its community partners prepare students to take away the occasion for violence in policing and the criminal justice system. Guilford’s president, two JPS professors, a Deputy Chief of the Greensboro Police Department and a community organizer with the Beloved Community Center share their insights regarding this critical topic.
On December 3, 2014, hours after a grand jury declined to indict a New York City
police officer for killing Eric Garner, protesters in Greensboro, North Carolina shut down
traffic at the city’s largest downtown intersection. The decision ignited an eruption of
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anger and protests across the country, and Greensboro was no exception. However, in
Greensboro, the police did not respond with pepper spray or arrests, as officers in some
cities did that night; rather, police leadership spoke with protest organizers and made
the decision to redirect traffic and to “let them be heard.” The local newspaper quoted
Deputy Police Chief James Hinson as saying, “Not making any arrests yet. We just want
to make sure this ends peacefully” (Lopez, 2014).
Greensboro residents’ responses to the police handling of the protesters ranged
from surprised relief and gratitude, to outrage. Many hoped that the police restraint
signaled a change in their practices; at past marches, protesters had been arrested for
blocking traffic and, in at least once case, tasered (Killian, 2007). Others were offended
and outraged that the protesters were not arrested; they broke the law and should pay
the consequences.
This dramatic split in residents’ responses is mirrored by racial and economic
divides in the city; Greensboro continues to be heavily segregated with a distressing
level of economic inequality. From 2000 to 2009, the median annual income for whites
in Greensboro increased $5,300; the annual income for African-Americans increased by
only $11 (Patterson, 2011). Greensboro’s history also reflects significant racial conflict
and division, including the 1979 killing by Klansmen and Neo-Nazis of five anti-Klan
demonstrators and their acquittal by two all-white juries (University of North Carolina at
Greensboro, n.d.), and more recently, the litigation against the city of Greensboro in
2009 by 39 black police officers for discrimination (Lehmert & Fernandez, 2009). At the
same time, there have been momentous efforts to address racial injustice: on February
1, 1961, four North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University students sparked the
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Sit-In movement at the Woolworth’s department store; and in 2005, the first Truth and
Reconciliation Commission in the United States was established there to address the
massacre at the anti-Klan rally (Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Project, 2006;
Jovanovic, 2012).
The Justice and Policy Studies Department at Quaker-founded Guilford College
is intentionally embedded in these local Greensboro political and social dynamics;
faculty and students in the department’s two majors, Criminal Justice, and Community
and Justice Studies, participate in police-community dialogues, city council meetings,
and other civic events that offer complex, real life examples that students can use to
apply and challenge theories from course readings.
Jane Fernandes, the new president of Guilford College, recently heard a detailed
account of JPS’ teaching and accomplishments and reflected back to faculty something
they hadn’t seen themselves: the embodiment of the Quaker Peace Testimony in the
JPS curriculum and pedagogy. Fernandes’ observation resonated enough with faculty
to spark further exploration of the connection, the results of which are recounted in this
article.
The Quaker Peace Testimony includes a belief in the “light within” or the intrinsic
value and capacity for goodness of every person, and the imperative to “take away the
occasion” for all war and violence (North Carolina Yearly Meeting – Conservative,
1983). As such, this article explores the question: “how do the JPS department and their
community partners prepare students--who will be police officers, prosecutors, parole
officers, prison administrators, judges, city leaders, and community activists—to find
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ways to take away the occasion for violence in policing and more broadly, in the criminal
justice system?”
Each contributor to the article has played an important role in the JPS curriculum:
President Fernandes through connecting the peace testimony to the curriculum; Deputy
Chief Hinson, as a part-time instructor in JPS and participant in JPS-led community
initiatives; Wesley Morris, as an organizer with the Beloved Community Center, one of
JPS’ core community partners; and Barbara Lawrence and Sherry Giles, as JPS faculty
members.
Each author brings a unique perspective on taking away the occasion for
violence in law enforcement that contributes to the preparation of JPS students to
engage in this work in their post-Guilford lives and professions. President Fernandes
begins with a reflection on how the JPS curriculum and pedagogy are part of Guilford
College’s principled legacy of peaceful resolution of conflict, community, and social
justice. Giles then delves into the origins of the peace testimony and its contemporary
application to law enforcement by Quakers, and in the JPS curriculum. Lawrence
follows with a reflection on how her experience as an African American woman, former
police officer, prosecutor, and public defender, and now as a professor, teaching people
who are incarcerated and chairing a “people’s” citizen review board for police
accountability have led her full circle in her understanding of policing as peacekeeping.
Deputy Chief Hinson discusses the importance of Compassion being added to the core
values of the Greensboro Police Department, and finally, Morris highlights the vital role
of community in holding police accountable. The article concludes with reflections on
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the implications of incorporating the peace testimony in academic programs for cultural
and political change.
A Principled Legacy
Jane K. Fernandes: The 1837 founders of Guilford College were ahead of their
time in their attention to peaceful conflict resolution, community, and social justice. Our
Quaker predecessors placed the education of women and girls on a par with that of
men and boys; taught slaves to read at a time when it was against North Carolina state
law to do so; and supported the Underground Railroad operating through their campus
property at personal risk. During the Civil War and immediately following, the school
community kept the school running against all odds. They made many sacrifices to
sustain the school and their legacy. Now, continuing that legacy is our responsibility.
As a non-Quaker, I had begun to immerse myself in learning about the Society of
Friends from my very first exploration of the school. Five original Quaker testimonies –
community, equality, integrity, simplicity and peace – undergird the College’s current
values-based curriculum. Guided in the context of the Quaker ethos, in July 2014, I was
honored and humbled to begin service as Guilford College’s ninth president, the first
woman and first deaf person to hold this position. One of my discoveries is that our
historical roots in racial justice are sustained today by a richly diverse and inclusive
faculty, staff and student body.
Just a few short weeks after I began as president, the deeply disturbing event in
Ferguson, Missouri took place. A police officer, shooting first and asking questions
later, killed Michael Brown, an unarmed young African American man. These unasked
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and therefore unanswered questions gripped our nation. As the questions grew and
festered, demonstrations and riots broke loose in Ferguson, a city and community left
devastated by the apparently unjustifiable killing of one of its citizens by an officer of the
law. As evidenced by the re-emergence of riots and lockdowns coinciding with the one-
year anniversary Michael Brown’s killing, the city of Ferguson is still gripped by grief and
pain. The human and material cost of the moment Michael Brown lost his life is
incalculable. There must be a better, more humane way.
Around this time, Guilford’s Justice and Policy Studies Department asked to
introduce me to their work, and I learned about the innovative approaches to law
enforcement that their B.S. and B.A. degrees espouse. We had an initial conversation
about whether it was time for Guilford to take a higher profile in the questions being
asked about law enforcement and its relationship to the African American community.
We wondered if it would be possible to build a philosophy and a practice of law
enforcement in which officers understood and lived out their dual role of maintaining
order and keeping peace. How could Guilford College fulfill a duty to bridge the growing
divide between the two roles?
By December similar unjustifiable killings had taken place in Staten Island,
Cleveland, and elsewhere. Many on campus were asking whether the young African
American men killed at this time – Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice – would
have been killed if they were White and whether police officers should have found non-
lethal ways to resolve the incidents before resorting to the use of lethal weapons.
Of course, we had no way to answer these questions, but the frequency of
incidents that tragically resulted in the deaths of African American men at the hands of
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police officers necessitated that we ask a larger question: Do we in effect have two
criminal justice systems that operate in very different ways, one for White citizens and
another for African American citizens? The fact that so many African American citizens
as well as members of other communities of color and a growing number of White
people do believe this to be true is corrosive to the civic unity that is essential to the
democracy we purport to be. We all pay a heavy human, material, and financial cost for
allowing people of color to experience injustice in our law enforcement policy and
practice and the added injustice of experiencing nothing done in response. These
injustices are not just a concern for African American citizens. They are and must be a
concern for all of us.
And they must be a concern for members of law enforcement who, we presume,
truly do wish to serve and protect every member of our communities, for the politicians
elected to lead those communities, and for the educators, community organizers, clergy,
social activists, and so many others who daily work to examine and transform the
legacy of racism in our nation.
As the school year progressed, many other African American men died when
involved with police officers. One of the images forever etched in my mind is that of
young Baltimore teenagers moving as an organized group with a remarkably disciplined
rhythm throwing rocks at Baltimore police officers who defended themselves with riot
gear in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death. Live national television showed the police
allowing themselves to become targets. I worried for all of our children in the wake of
our apparent inability to maintain peace on our public streets. How can we achieve the
civil and just society we strive to be? I asked myself, as Guilford College’s president,
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what our responsibility as educators is to live with this question, explore answers, and
create new knowledge that will guide law enforcement to a positive relationship with
communities they serve, especially African Americans and other people of color.
In June, the final month of my first year as president, we arose to the news of
another tragic shooting claiming the lives of nine African Americans at a famous
historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina. In the wake of continued killings
of African Americans, we cannot turn a blind eye to what has devolved into a tragedy of
epic proportions. Black lives decidedly do matter.
Struggling with social justice issues of breadth and complexity is precisely the
legacy we inherited from Guilford College’s founders. We strive to engage students
with their studies in an intellectual way while also learning to see the world as an arena
for action in which they apply their learning to address social issues. Our students learn
to understand the dynamics that have structured – and continue to structure –
interactions among various communities, especially when those dynamics reflect
differentials of racial, social, and economic power.
As you will read in the following pages, the Justice and Policy Studies
department took seriously the question of whether law enforcement philosophy and
practice can or should be grounded in peace. We do not have all the answers, but we
are asking the questions. As risk takers and innovators, we are fulfilling our role as a
principled and practical liberal arts college actively engaged in the greater community.
With the direct involvement of Greensboro police officers and community organizers
focused on peace, we hope to create relevant and authentic approaches to law
enforcement and convey them through our curriculum. Moved by the work of the Justice
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and Policy Studies department, I invite you to learn about this forward-thinking work as
well.
The Peace Testimony in the Justice and Policy Studies Department
Hollyce “Sherry” Giles: Few would disagree that policing in the United States is
in crisis. The seemingly unending deaths of unarmed African Americans as a result of
police actions, the murder of two New York City police officers by a gunman in late
2014, the overreliance on the use of force by police (Apuzzo, 2015) and the use of
police to respond to social ills when they are ill-equipped for this kind of work (Coates,
2015) offer undeniable evidence of this crisis.
In the context of this broken and deadly criminal justice system, how can
academic programs prepare students who are going to be part of the system to
transform it? How can the Quaker peace testimony inform these efforts?
My connection to this topic has grown organically from my work as a JPS
professor and from being active in social change efforts in Greensboro. I’ve led
community-based research projects on police accountability with students and the
Beloved Community Center and helped with Beloved’s efforts to organize an Interim
Citizen’s Review Board to hold police accountable; co-founded Counter Stories a
restorative justice community initiative that brings together police, community members,
and city leaders to build a city where all residents feel safe, respected, and protected;
and am a member of the Program Committee for the American Friends Service
Committee, Carolinas office, which addresses police militarization and violence. My
most powerful learning about the excessive use of force by police has come from
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spending time in communities with first-hand experience of it and hearing survivors’
stories.
The origins of the Quaker peace testimony come from the declaration made by
Quaker founder George Fox and others to King Charles II of England in 1660: “We
utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fighting with outward weapons for any end
or under any pretense whatever; . . . .” Each Quaker yearly meeting, interprets the
testimony in the context of its time and place, often in the form of a query. The North
Carolina Yearly Meeting – Conservative (1983) poses this query: “Do we endeavor to
live in the life and power that takes away the occasion of all war, seeking to do our part
in the work of reconciliation between individuals, groups, and nations?”
In recent years, the peace testimony has expanded beyond a focus on the
violence of war to include violence related to policing, and structural violence, defined
as social structures that cause harm to people by not allowing them to meet their needs.
As Quaker Roy Love has noted “. . . the testimony to peace . . . has been broadened
today to include all the social and economic evils from which war and conflict emerge”
(Love, 2015, p. 14). Quaker organizations, such as the American Friends Service
Committee, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and the Alternatives to
Violence Project, work toward changes in policing and social structures guided by the
peace testimony.
The Justice and Policy Studies department, or JPS, is one of the largest
departments at Guilford College, with over 200 students enrolled its two majors—
Criminal Justice and Community and Justice Studies. The Criminal Justice major
studies the criminal justice system from an administrative, top-down vantage point,
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while the perspective of the Community and Justice Studies major is grounded in a
grass roots, bottom-up view of justice. Since the requirements for the two majors
overlap considerably, current and aspiring police officers sit in the same classrooms
with community activists, including those involved with the #BlackLivesMatter
movement. Faculty have realized that the conflicts between these worldviews imported
from the broader society into our classrooms, and into our department meetings, offer
us a unique opportunity to grapple with the divide between police and communities of
color; we work to make these creative tensions from which we can learn.
Three components of our curriculum prepare students to “remove the occasion
for violence” in policing and the broader criminal justice system, guided by a belief in the
“inward light” or innate value of every human being. The first component is engaging
students in the critical study of the role of policing in relation to the American political
economy, that is, how political, economic, and racial/cultural systems shape our
understanding of criminal offences and violence, and acceptable police responses to
the offences. Our current courses that address this topic are Race, Society, and
Criminal Justice; Understanding Oppressive Systems; and Trust and Violence. The
knowledge offered by these courses gives students a critical perspective on policing
that they can take with them in to the field to use to change it.
The second component of our curriculum that reflects the peace testimony is
courses that teach skills that enable students to address serious social and community
issues in non-violent ways. These courses include Restorative Justice—an approach
that brings offenders, victims, and communities together to repair harms and restore
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relationships; Community Building; Conflict Resolution; Group Dynamics and
Leadership; and Community Problem Solving.
The third component, which I believe to be the most powerful, are the substantial
experiential parts of our curriculum: our community-based teaching and research;
faculty and student involvement in local initiatives on police accountability, community
safety, and healing; and our Higher Education in Prison Initiative in which people who
are incarcerated take Guilford College courses. Guilford faculty teach in the prison
initiative, and our students on the “outside” offer tutoring to students who are “inside” a
local prison.
Through these engagements, we remove the occasion for violence by coming
into relationship with each other and increasing our understanding of radically different
perspectives. One example of this process can be found in our community-based
research projects on police accountability in partnership with the Beloved Community
Center. In the fall of 2010, the Greensboro police chief wrote to the then president of
Guilford College and asked him to stop the research project we were doing on police
accountability. The president declined to do so, responding that such research into a
public institution may prove useful, and that the college doesn’t censor faculty’s
teaching or scholarship. Four years later, in the spring of 2014, when we began a
subsequent research project on the police, the same police chief accepted our invitation
to meet with us early in the project, and came to the public presentation of the findings
at the end of the semester, along with his supervisor, the Deputy City Manager for
Public Safety, and his Deputy Chief, James Hinson. We didn’t agree on everything, but
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police heard voices from the community, and members of the community had a better
understanding of police perspectives.
We have faced some challenges in our efforts. One issue is institutional racism
within the broader community, and in the police department, reflected in many ways,
including the absence of grocery stores and other amenities on the east, more African
American side of town, the difference in economic outcomes for whites and blacks
(Patterson, 2011), and racial profiling even within the police department (Lehmert &
Fernandez, 2009). A promising recent initiative in which JPS faculty and students
participated was “Doing Our Own Work: White People Working to End Racism.” The
mostly white Greensboro residents at the group’s first meeting at a local church heard
disturbing information about racial inequities in Greensboro and began discussing
strategies to change these decades-old patterns (McLaughlin, 2015).
A related issue is making sure that people just trying to survive are part of our
efforts to hold the police accountable and strengthen police-community relations.
Greensboro police have been holding Coffee with a Cop gathering, mostly in coffee
shops frequented by white liberals in west Greensboro, instead of barber shops on the
east, more African American side of town. And in our Counter Stories groups, people
most at the mercy of the excessive use of force by police, have been underrepresented.
Quaker Paul Hamell articulates a pathway for taking away the occasion for
violence in law enforcement that offers a worthy goal for JPS and our partners: “When
the police rejoin the community, the community can truly take responsibility for its own
safety . . . but not community policing units that are essentially PR units or used as
aggressive street crime or narcotics suppression teams. But “partners in peacemaking
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with the community.” This is a daunting goal to work toward with our police colleagues
and the civilian community, a goal made more likely if we can remember that the inward
light dwells within everyone, young black people, police officers, academics, and other
community members—everyone trying to build a more peaceful and just city.
Coming Full Circle
Barbara J. Lawrence: As a fearless African American woman who went from
police officer to prosecutor to public defender and now professor, teaching courses in
the Justice and Policy Studies (JPS) Department at Guilford College for the past nine
years has been an enlightening and “full circle” experience for me. A native New Yorker
who served as a New York City police officer for thirteen years and was formally
educated in a progressive criminal justice bachelor’s program at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice, I bring a perspective to policing, peace keeping and police
accountability that is not only unique but sometimes “schizophrenic.” When I teach our
Race, Society and Criminal Justice, and Understanding Oppressive Systems courses, it
is easy for me to embrace and discuss with students some major aspects of Michelle
Alexander’s (2011) book, The New Jim Crow, that describes biased practices of the
police in the United States, while at the same time understanding these practices from a
police officer’s perspective.
In her “Color of Justice” chapter, Alexander (2011) observes: in every state,
“African Americans, particularly in the poorest neighborhoods, are subjected to tactics
and practices that would result in public outrage and scandal if committed in middle-
class white neighborhoods.” There were several years of my life as an officer that I
deliberately, albeit both reluctantly and willingly, participated in different aspects of
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extreme policing and hyper surveillance in certain communities in New York City: from
working narcotics undercover in poor neighborhoods in Brooklyn to decoy assignments
waiting for poor people to “snatch my gold chain” or “jump the turnstile” in the subway
system. Mainstream media and my research show there is not much difference in law
enforcement practices today than when I was an officer almost thirty years ago.
These courses help students understand and realize how some of the impact of
policing people of color is evidenced before our eyes on nightly news channels that
show communities in American cities that have many young men, particularly African
American, wasting away who are unable to thrive because most are under the
supervision of the criminal justice system. Racial bias in the war on drugs is a major
reason one in 14 black men was behind bars in 2006 compared to one in 106 white
men (Alexander, 2011). The numbers are not much different or worse today.
Reflecting back on my experiences in the late 80s and early/mid 90s, they at
times resemble some of the current enforcement practices of the Greensboro Police
Department and other law enforcement departments in the United States in similarly
situated neighborhoods. This past spring semester I was able to have students vividly
apply the racialized practices outlined in our course readings by using several
mainstream media examples of biased and racial profiling cases that, in some
instances, ended in tragedy, including Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, etc.
These situations offered clear examples of the additional work and education that needs
to happen in both law enforcement and communities that have large numbers of African
Americans; these efforts must include new and different discussions of peace and
peace-keeping.
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In these criminal justice courses I teach, it is has been necessary and helpful for
me to bring guest speakers who are members of the police department ranked from
police officer up to Deputy Chief. Students have been able to engage with these officers
in ways that broadened their perspectives from both sides as it relates to law
enforcement, peace keeping and crime control. In one class an African American
Lieutenant spent half of the class period talking about the fear he and his patrol officers
are feeling when responding to situations. The fear of not being able to go home to their
families may cause them to be less patient/tolerant of uncooperative citizens. He
explained how most people follow instructions and it is uncommon when citizens do the
opposite. On the other hand, he explained how training standards and hiring a more
diversely educated patrol force is often key in decreasing the number of civilian
complaints against police.
Since I teach courses in both of our majors, Criminal Justice and Community and
Justice Studies, I am able to include the necessary tenets of peace and restorative
justice to deepen students’ analysis and understanding of law enforcement and
community voice in these discussions. From my experience, I tell students my
perspective consisted of maintaining the theme of not being able to “disturb the peace
of the peace officer.” Back then, if I or my fellow officers let civilians disturb our peace,
those situations usually ended negatively. We were taught to be “keepers of the peace.”
In most instances, peace keeping worked not only in our favor but that of the civilians as
well.
Our students are diverse and include individuals representing traditional age,
adult learners, and early college (high school age) students of different racial and ethnic
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backgrounds who bring a strong variety of perspectives and analyses. My courses
usually begin with an interdisciplinary discussion of structural inequality and a context
for looking at law enforcement, community and the criminal justice system then and
now. In my community problem-solving course, I bring in speakers who are
representatives from public agencies such as Department of Social Services, grassroots
and non-profit organizations to highlight the institutional practices and procedures that
unintentionally result in economic and racial disparity highlighted in course materials.
Students get first-hand knowledge and experience of how these systems work as well
as real examples of advocacy efforts occurring in the communities in which they often
both live and serve.
Often students who live in communities that are directly affected by these
systems in a disparate way are the most vocal, informative, hopeful and resistant. The
diversity in the student body helps balance the discussions and learning at Guilford
College.
Early in our discussions we talk about historical frameworks for institutional
racism and disparity as it exists along racial and class lines. As an African American
woman teaching at a predominantly white private liberal arts college in North Carolina,
these discussions are typically more challenging for my students and me than they
might be for my white colleagues. This challenge is usually reflected in course
evaluations or white and/or male students feeling more comfortable sharing their
thoughts and feelings about discussions of race and class in my courses than with other
faculty who are white and male. I usually take those uncomfortable moments as signs of
progress and breakthrough. As a result, some of our criminal justice and community and
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justice studies courses have over time become not only some of the most challenging
but popular classes on campus based on student feedback amongst themselves.
Several of our students were encouraged to work toward changing the system by
becoming consciousness-raised prosecuting or defense attorneys. A few have gone on
to become successful attorneys.
My previous work as a prosecutor and public defender enabled me to gain
additional perspectives on the criminal justice system and its relationship to the
community. Having practiced and been witness to experiences that amounted to
glaring examples of biased practices in policing and prosecuting criminal cases on the
one hand, to witnessing extraordinary examples of pure justice, I can understand how
criminal justice and sociology studies and scholars conclude that some communities in
American cities have been and are now under siege. As Alice Goffman (2014) so aptly
describes in On the Run, “a new social fabric is emerging under the threat of
confinement: one woven in suspicion, distrust, and the paranoiac practices of secrecy,
evasion, and unpredictability.”
Now as an Associate Professor of Justice and Policy Studies working with and
teaching future and current law enforcement professionals, legislators, activists and
leaders, I find the conversations and experiences during my time as a prosecutor are
different, but very much the same. The narratives infrequently change when discussing
policing in certain communities. Those experiences help me to bring not only
interdisciplinary academic perspectives but tried and true uniquely felt references in my
class discussions. I often remind students the police are charged with being
peacekeepers. I ask them, “what should that look like in everyday practice?” Sometimes
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students find it hard to see police as anything other than an occupying force in their
communities and neighborhoods throughout the country.
To work toward a vision of police as peacekeeping, as part of their coursework,
JPS students and faculty work directly with community groups, organizations and the
Greensboro Police Department to address issues facing community members regarding
civilian complaints, community policing, youth programs, immigrant and refugee
communities. Utilizing independent research projects, participatory action research,
internships and volunteer work, students and faculty work closely with community
members. The drive for police accountability, prosecutorial accountability as well as
community accountability have been the focus for these efforts.
We were able to start the first and only Interim Citizens Police Review Committee
in the state of North Carolina of which I serve as Chair. As part our constitutional
framework of checks and balances, we have the right to hold the government
accountable for their actions to the people. Our students in the JPS programs are aware
of this recurring theme and leave equipped with notions of fundamental fairness and
enhanced policy analysis skills.
Additionally, as a result of these collaborative efforts in the classroom, Tiffany
Kallam, one of our graduates, birthed the idea of taking these courses and education to
local prisons. After two years of planning, meetings, research, travelling and visiting
prison education programs to places as far as San Quentin, she and others founded
Guilford College’s Higher Education in Prison Program. We currently offer a five-
semester certificate program to inmates in two correctional facilities in North Carolina.
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One program is located in Salisbury at a men’s medium custody facility and the other is
in Troy at a women’s medium custody facility.
As the Director, and one of the primary instructors in our program, the experience for
me after serving as a former police officer, prosecutor, public defender and now
professor has been one of “coming full circle” in the struggle for justice in the field and
study of both criminal and community justice. When I recently asked the women
inmates in our prison education program, “how does it feel to be newly accepted
Guilford College students?” some of their tear-filled responses were “Miss Lawrence,
the fact that you drive here every week for us makes me feel like I am worth something;
This program makes me feel like I am somebody; I am in “real” college—not some
watered down version the community college brings to us; My family told me I wouldn’t
amount to anything and that I won’t even be able to go near a college. Now, I have an
enhanced vocabulary. My favorite word now is “empirical” thanks to you and Guilford
College; I was a career criminal that landed me in this place. After taking this course
and learned so much about the world out there, when I leave here this time, I ain’t never
coming back.” Our program provides evidence of the transformative effect higher
education has on individuals that have been written off by society who, because of the
coursework, aspire to restore peace, nonviolence, justice and give back to their
communities. Each student in our prison initiative speaks to how she or he looks
forward to teaching what they have learned.
In conclusion, I look back over my life and remember when I convinced a jury to
sentence a19 year-old African American man to fifteen years to life based on a felony
enhancement statute I didn’t support. After they sentenced him, I couldn’t sleep
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comfortably for one week. Two weeks later I was part of an investigative team that
helped the grand jury indict several individuals who were defrauding a social service
agency by using fake contracts for services they didn’t provide in low income
communities. From undercover narcotics initiatives, working in the police department’s
first domestic violence unit to teaching law and sensitivity training in the police
academy, restoring peace has been a guiding principle for me. Teaching courses and
working at Guilford College allows me to collaborate with folks from the community,
courts, cops and corrections while bringing a primary message of “peace” more
effectively to solve community problems.
If we continue to represent ourselves through our timeless values of community,
diversity, equality, excellence, integrity, justice and stewardship, we are bound to impact
the lives of those most in need as well as shine brighter in the world of liberal arts
educators.
Compassion as a Core Value in Policing
James E. Hinson, Jr.: After serving 24 years with the Greensboro Police
Department (GPD) by rising through the ranks to my current position as Deputy Chief, I
clearly see and understand the struggles of the community as they relate to their
concerns regarding police accountability. Utilizing the framework of my undergraduate
education from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NCA&T) and
graduate studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) has
allowed me to see the world of policing through a broader lens. I encourage all new and
seasoned law enforcement officers to attain a liberal arts college education as it has
been beneficial to me in my work.
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I incorporate the GPD’s core values of honesty, integrity, stewardship, respect,
trust, and accountability in my work. These values are great, but I always have felt
compassion is missing from the list. When policing, compassion must be the
centerpiece of how we conduct ourselves on a daily basis when interacting with the
community.
There are many references to confirm the importance of compassion in policing;
however, I will speak to one example of this embodiment of compassion in my work. A
few years ago, as a Captain, I was responsible for the Eastern Division of Greensboro
that comprised a population of approximately 70,000 where the crime rate was high.
The former police chief (Ken Miller) asked me to address the relevant issues of lack of
trust and high crime rates.
I approached these problems by initially attending all of the community meetings
in the district which averaged about thirty per month. Sometimes there were two
meetings held per day. I let all of the residents in attendance at those meetings know I
take their concerns seriously. I learned most felt the police didn’t care about their
specific concerns which contributed to a lack of trust. One concern was the perception
of the community that very high rates of crime existed on the east side of Greensboro,
while there were much lower rates of crime commission on the west side of town. I
assured residents that I would address each of their concerns and gave everybody in
attendance my City cell phone number as a means to have direct contact with me any
time of the day. When people called and I responded to their concerns, it broke down
the usual barriers of distrust and provided them with feedback in reference to their issue
being addressed in a timely manner.
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Additional reinforcement was taken when I told the patrol officers that we have to
do things differently. We have to break down the barriers of distrust and build
partnerships. We need to roll down the windows, get out of the patrol car and interact
with the community differently.
Some of the community members felt that while the police seemed to respond
differently than in the past to their calls for assistance in addressing crimes of larcenies
and burglaries, they did not trust that anything would change in the end. My patrol
officers were told they have to let down their defense mechanisms where we can have
positive interaction with the community. I told them that if we have to make an arrest,
make it in a manner where we respect that person. Treat them with respect and dignity.
As a result of taking these concerns to the officers, they brought in the new
approach of interacting with the community in a positive and “thinking outside of the
box” manner. They experimented with ideas that were non-traditional to policing and
operated with a high sense of compassion. Some of the subsequent events included
residential awareness burglary events; free haircut events for youth in the community;
partnerships with NCA&T fraternity and sororities that addressed ongoing crime;
community fish fry’s to show the GPD’s gratitude for citizens who partnered with us.
Other examples included increased foot patrols; partnerships with the Dudley High
School Football Team, Page High School ROTC, Buffalo Soldiers and various other
community stakeholders that allowed us to address crime in more collaborative ways.
These partnerships, while new and improved, changed attitudes and non-
traditional ideas of problem solving and allowed us to successfully reduce crime
significantly over a three-year period, build trust and enhance relationships, and create
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a better sense of understanding between the community and police. These actions
further exhibited our core values along with the addition of compassion.
Too Much Power, in Too Few Hands, for Far Too Long
Wesley Morris: To honor the intrinsic light within others with integrity, a
community is responsible to its most marginalized members. As a community organizer
with the Beloved Community Center, partnering with Guilford College and the JPS
department has been imperative in working toward this goal in our community; my hope
is that it happens more often. Anchor institutions of justice-seeking, such as Guilford
College, are made better by the shared experience of community organizing offered by
groups like Beloved. This kind of partnership informs the academy as much as it
pushes forward grassroots initiatives. People in the community who are alone in their
struggles come together with students abstracted from their communities, living in a
campus bubble. The gift is in the training for students who see themselves as
researchers and otherwise may not hear the active voices of the communities. The
collaboration adds back into the educational process a key relationship between authors
in the community and their narratives, and provides an instructive context for students’
future research in a variety of fields.
An issue affecting the lives of marginalized people in Greensboro is that the
mechanism for redress of harms caused by the police in our city has thus far been
overseen by the police department itself. This arrangement of power constantly
produces community problems because citizens lack access to the tools of
accountability. This lack of access poses a threat to democracy as systems operate
unrestrained by citizens’ rights and protection.
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The Quaker peace testimony has a built-in philosophy of restorative justice as its
ethos. The same belief exists within the Beloved Community Center; human dignity,
value and worth deserve protection, and that protection is for both victimizer and victim.
To restore the harmed and expose a system of corruption is equally important as setting
the conditions for transformation of the whole society. For institutions such as the police
department, this means its power of judge and jury must be redistributed to the people.
Laws are not responsible for producing human beings. Culture has more
influence in this regard, but laws do impact the way we are in relationship with each
other. Police officers are not exempt from culture, in uniform or as civilians. The
distinction happens when the uniform, accompanied by a firearm, handcuffs and
impunity in court enact the worst parts of the cultural imagination. This imagination has
proven that black and brown people, poor people, women and those identifying as
LGBTQ are targets of discrimination. Surveys allegedly offering evidence of equity in
policing have been raised by police chiefs as solutions. This way of being in community
makes the peace far more difficult to achieve. Studies often are used as a way to
silence critique. Restorative justice requires mutual respect and engagement.
Facilitation of this peace starts at the most basic level of seeing someone different from
yourself as yourself.
Such a change in perspective requires long held beliefs and labels like "gang,
queer, white, rich" to be interrogated. They are often loaded with forgone conclusions
about the value and worth of the person who is fit into that box. Over and over again
these labels have been proven too small for any person whom I have met in the work of
organizing.
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I remember the amount of effort it takes to win even one case of excessive force
by police. Two years ago, several young women at Bennett College who were campus
leaders, were mistreated by police and falsely accused of resisting arrest (Ginsburg,
2013). The Beloved Community Center organized city council members, ministers,
students, faculty, and former college presidents to stand for them. We packed court
rooms, organized local meetings at churches, and encouraged community dialogues for
the case of one of the students who decided to go to trial. This case was won, but I was
struck by the idea that a young woman who was not first in her class, not in college, not
graduating and in her local community would be hard pressed to escape such a vicious
trap. This is what scares me, that a nation of laws has not protected everyone; it has not
even tried because the labels and foregone cultural conclusions do not regard us all as
equal.
I imagine part of the difficulty in community and police relations is the inevitable
challenges in doing justice when the pressure of policing is also felt by those who
choose to be in law enforcement. Navigating the complexity of justice-making as a
police officer must be inherently problematic. This fact does not excuse misbehavior or
corruption, but it does highlight factors that contribute to the need for intervention and
problem solving that require a third party. The peace testimony may help to address this
concern in that it offers a way for an officer to suspend her traditional understanding of
her authority and open her relationship to others.
When one act of restraint is made, such as the decision by the police to stand
down in regards to the arrest and jailing of activists after the grand jury decision not to
indict the officer involved in Eric Garner’s death, the next day is just as important. The
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next day, a bevy of criticisms were laid on the New York City police commanders for
their restraint. Persons enjoying a level of privilege and who were majority white
condemned the grace offered and questioned why "these people" were not arrested.
They did not seem to see the accumulated wounds that were reopened by the grand
jury decision and its local manifestations. Part of the power in #blacklivesmatter activism
is the relationships it has grown among blacks across state lines as a form of collective
mourning and resistance-making.
Students from Greensboro have been the catalyst for change in our nation’s laws
and ways of governing. The book titled Civilities and Civil Rights (Chafe, 1980) is a
great resource for understanding the profound impact of student and youth activism. In
recent years, the Beloved Community Center, through its partnership with Guilford
College, has proven a necessary advocate for many issues of justice in Greensboro. In
several cases, community members young and old, including students from historically
black educational institutions NCA&T University and Bennett College, have been
victimized by local law enforcement and came to Beloved seeking help. The mission of
the organization is to stand with people especially as they are struggling. The inner light
aspect of the Quaker peace testimony reminds me of the scripture to put our light, our
justice and our community on a hill. This is the work of community truth and
reconciliation and it is the ongoing work of oppressed people across the world.
Mass incarceration is a ravaging disease that is tearing at our nation. Locally, it
shows up in prison reentry rates, lack of opportunities for the formerly incarcerated,
broken communities and disrupted families. In confronting this dynamic period of
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systemic hostility, our very ways of being are at question. A web of policies and
practices hold this destructive system in place.
In my experience, it is imperative to make a distinction between how a policy or
practice sounds and how people in neighborhoods experience it. This becomes
particularly important when a policy or practice is communicated by the authorities
whose actions are questioned, both nationally and locally as law enforcement is now
under scrutiny by the nation. The resistance on behalf of law enforcement officials
across the nation to enter into community accountability projects has caused more harm
than good. It is better to trust that a way is possible than to deny the need for one. It is
my belief that the Quaker peace testimony, when shaped and molded by communities
in need, will find itself useful and dynamic. Greensboro needs tools for justice making
and so does the nation at large. The peace testimony is one such tool.
Conclusion
The opening line of the gospel song, “The Best of Me,” frequently finds its way
into lectures and talks by Professor Barbara Lawrence: “He saw the best in me, when
everyone else around could only see the worst in me.” Translating from gospel to
Quaker idiom, one might say “he saw the light within me, when no one else saw it.”
There is a long history in Greensboro of not seeing the light within or the best in people
who have been marginalized by the city. When Deputy Chief Hinson decided to let
protestors of the Eric Garner decision to be heard rather than to arrest them, he
implicitly acknowledged the light within them, almost certainly taking away the occasion
for violence. In creating the Interim Citizens Review Board, the Beloved Community
Center acknowledged the light within people who feel they have been harmed by
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Greensboro police, whose concerns have been rejected or ignored by the city’s appeals
process.
With these partners, JPS continues the 178-year history of Guilford College’s
witness to the Quaker peace testimony. Faculty, students, and their partners strive to
see the light within each other in a context that works mightily to block this vision. In
these struggles resides a trove of learning for students, and through them, hope for
change during what the hip-hop band, the Roots, has coined as the “post-hope” era
(Chang, 2014, p. 293).
The authors invite other colleges to reach out to community partners to form
similar ventures. Students are bearers of cultural change. As Chang and Kobar (2010)
has observed, “cultural change is often the dress rehearsal for political change. Or put
in another way, political change is the final manifestation of cultural shifts that have
already occurred” (para. 4). The more community-based academic programs that foster
cultural change among their students, the sooner the country is likely to leave behind
this post-hope era for a more just and peace-filled epoch.
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